English

English:

At Farrington Gurney Primary, we recognise the central importance of English, as a subject in its own right, and as a way to promote a positive attitude to reading, writing, speaking and listening. We believe that developing as a confident reader is a fundamental entitlement for every individual pupil. Reading is the key that opens up the whole curriculum and is critical to pupils’ academic success. Reading also provides powerful cultural capital for pupils to help them to understand the world around them, and to become well-informed and knowledgeable citizens. Making sure that pupils learn to read is the heart of the school’s equalities duty and mission as a church school, where all pupils become the best they can be. We recognise the moral imperative to develop pupils as capable readers a foundation for learning and to help them to overcome disadvantage through education:

Our Intent:

Believe that every child can learn to read and write well – with the right teaching and encouragement
Place reading, and books, at the heart of our curriculum
Invest in our staff training so that they gain expertise in teaching pupils to read.
Build time for all children to read independently, for pleasure and to be read to within the school day.
Inspire our pupils by enriching the curriculum with author visits, reading competitions and by building their knowledge of a broad range of authors and literature
Involve parents to encourage our school reading culture to extend to the home environment
Have developed a clear and sequential whole school strategy for teaching pupils to decode words, understand and enjoy texts.
Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
Acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language

Reading:

We use Unlocking Letters and Sounds as our way of delivering our phonics lessons.

Reading is taught daily.

In Key Stage 1, children progress through the reading scheme, which is linked to their phonics level.

In Key Stage 2 we use whole class and individual reading. For whole class reading, we have a quality text per term which we use as our guided reading book. We use Accelerated Reader to encourage and build independent reading skills and track progress accurately.

Writing:

Our main vehicle for delivering our writing curriculum is through The Write Stuff. This is used as a basis to teach children quality vocabulary and grammatical structures from Reception upwards. It works by breaking writing down into smaller parts, which are then heavily modelled by the teachers before the children repeatedly practise the writing skills over time.

We have our own Spelling Scheme which is taught from Year 2 - 6 and is taught daily in KS1 and 3 times per week in KS2. Children learn spelling patterns and rules, statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings. Our scheme teaches spelling in a 'Little-but-often' structure which allows children to revisit and review, learn new strategies and apply. It also includes a variety of strategies to practise so that children with different learning styles can find out what works well for them.

Additional Information

Grammar

Here is our progression document from grammar: HERE

The Write Stuff:

You can find out more about The Write Stuff and purchase the book by visiting the website:

https://www.thetrainingspace.co.uk

Primary English Curriculum:

Our writing lessons, alongside our reading lessons, are carefully structured to deliver the complete English National Curriculum. You can see this document here along with our English Policy:

Primary English Curriculum

Useful Links:

There is a wealth of amazing websites out there to support writing, both at home and at school. Below is a selection of some of our favourites.

Bitesize

Bitesize has videos, games, guides and lockdown lessons available.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zt3rkqt

Literacy Shed

Check out the range of ‘sheds’ in their ‘What’s New?’ section.

https://www.literacyshed.com/

Vocabulary Ninja

There are some great resources here to help expand vocabulary.

https://vocabularyninja.co.uk/